It has been just over three years since Dday. I haven't posted in a long while mainly due to the fact that I was (voluntarily) banned. I'm cheating here with a new email address. It has been a long three years but only within the last few months has the pain of the affair begun to fade. Gemela and I are doing well. the DDs are doing great in school. DD1 is becoming a good golfer and DD2 has set her sights on tennis. I've always heard that it takes about 5 years to really get this all behind and I can now see the truth in that. I do think it will be a couple of more years before trust will be truly established. I'm just not there quite yet although I don't really check on gemela very much these days. She does a very good job of maintaining transparency and a much better sense of personal boundaries.

I have been (mostly) following MB principles and I can see how you can truly make an affair-resistant marriage. More important than that, following MB saved our marriage. All the support, advice and encouragement from this forum got me through those very difficult times so anyone wanting to try to save a marriage should really stay glued to the board.

I had myself banned because I got to the point where posting about affairs trying to help those recently betrayed began to take its emotional toll. It was hard to try to heal my own suffereing when I was so vividly trying to rethink my experiences for others. The banning was a good choice.

One thing I have learned is that if you do want to try to save your marriage from the affair, sooner or later you have to find a way to accept the fact that it happened. You simply have to deal with it and that turned out to be the hardest thing. Nothing is ever going to make it fair or right. Nothing will ever be able to rationalize it into oblivion. Nothing WS can say or do will ever make it more palatable.

I don't want this to sound callous but I also learned in the process that gemela could leave tomorrow and I would still go on to a happy life without her. I learned that I don't need her. I do choose to remain with her and will be happy while we are together but my happiness no longer depends on being married to her and that is a very difficult concept to grasp while going through the grieving process.

Only now after these three years am I beginning to enjoy being married again and things get better each day. There were times when I asked myself if it was really worth it. Under different circumstances I might even have given up but the family situation made that difficult. I am now glad that I never quit and I am finally beginning to look toward the future rather than the past.

For anyone reading this, in a nutshell what I want to say that there is hope. There is a huge difference between love and being in love. Being in love will not get you through because that is eventually destroyed by the A if not immediatly. It can come back though but it takes time and trust and it is probably the last thing to be recovered from the quagmire of betrayel.

I have no idea how gemela feels about her A or if she thinks of pool boy fondly. I don't care to ask. I suspect she doesn't look back on it fondly and, at times, I wonder if she even remembers much about it. Regardless, the issue is moot because it is irrelevant to the process of recovery. I still haven't figured out what my ENs are though and I've pretty much given up trying.

In closing, if you are struggling to try to save your marriage, there is no better way than MB. Exposure works. Affairs do die. The WS can change how they feel about the BS. They truly can stop thinking that the BS is Satan incarnate and might even entertain thoughts that the OP might actually have been the demon. If you can recover your marriage, it will never ever be like it once was. That marriage is dead. But your new marriage will probably be better than the one you were trying to save if you continue the MB process.

Thank you!

I hope that "Just found out's" will pay attention to this.

I wish you and your marriage well.

God Bless!

giorgos,

Good to hear from you again. Yes, I do remember you and gemela, and how hard you fought with your rage and anger.

As a BS, I know, as I did the same things for years.
I'm now six plus years out, and I agree, for many of us it will take a lot more than the two years touted around here by so many. Took me a lot more, and it really seems to be an individual thing, if one would ask me.

For what it's worth, I think it is extremely important for the WS to see all of the hurt, anger, and destruction caused by their selfish choice to have an A. Otherwise, they will never understand to true poison of their choice. The worse thing a BS can do is to try to sweep it under the rug and "excuse" it away. This sends the wrong message to the WS and will not motivate them to forming firm boundaries to affair proof the M. It is exactly what most WS's would try to do, if given the choice.

Good for you for standing up for your M.


I've read extensively about the cycle of forgiveness and it has been said by most experts, that the final phase of grief and forgiveness is ACCEPTENCE! It would seem from your post that is where you have finally arrived.

Acceptence isn't easy, and we will try every method possible to avoid it, most often, the anger, rage, and continuous LB's and DJ's that we used for litterally years, but, we soon learn, that doesn't work either. Acceptence, my friend, is the final stage of your grief cycle, and I am so pleased that you have finally arrived there, truly.

There will continue to be some hurtful thoughts in the future, but at times like these, simply pull out pictures of your DD's and you will begin to see that your choice to stand for your M was absolutely the best possible choice you could have made.

The choice to live beyond betrayal teaches us something about ourselves. Satan doesn't always win. Sometimes, we find a strength in ourselves that we never knew existed. Your strength has saved your M, ensured a healthy and happy life for your daughters, and has shown your W that there is salvation and healing through forgiveness. What more could you ask for???

Kudos to you giorgos, you really do sound So much better than you did in the past. I see healing and most importantly, HOPE!!!

All Blessings,
Jerry

It is nice to see you back for an update.

Are you still in Saudi Arabia? I found your descriptions of life there fascinating.

It does take at least two years but it really took me longer than that too. One doesn't want to discourage BS's from putting in for the long haul of recovery. Some WS's are a bit harder nuts to crack than others.

Welcome back. Lots can learn from your experience and you're fun to read too.

Thanks for the update!

And it's good to hear that things are developing mostly as sn MB- expected success story.

It's a pity gemela never posted much here. It would have been nice to hear from her too.

I certainly wouldn't want to discourage anyone from trying to save their marriage but I think of it slightly differently. For people who are in a long slow process that seems like it is never going anywhere, perseverance can be rewarded. If I had been told that if I didn't see any improvement within two years to give up, I would be divorced now. In actual fact, two years seemed to be the turning point in the process. It is when I met gemela in Mexico after she had spent the summer there that I saw a significant step-change in her. That reunion could have gone either way. Maybe she sensed that - I don't know. But after that began the slow process of acceptance and rebuilding trust. I have about one year with gemela really trying to work on her side of the equation. I probably do trust her now. I don't have any thoughts that she might be having an affair or even be tempted by that. But I also am reluctant at this point to open myself up completely but I think I'll get there in another year or two. Even so, we are happy even with what we have.

I have no idea if gemela has embraced the pain she caused not only to me but to everyone around her. I know it is something she would never want to willingly do again. But as many people continued to point out to me, cultural differences may have played a factor in her unwillingness to express remorse in a way meaningful to me. But this also points out a very significant issue that I believe any BS should be aware of. Each of us has, at some point, drawn a line in the sand that WS must cross before we say we will accept them. Usually that is while the A is still ongoing. We set some guidelines for ourselves by which WS must abide. This is part of the negotiation process and it is a debate I continually had with ToddAC - what happens if WS does not put both feet over that line? If WS does not follow our rules to the letter, do we divorce? Some people do and they certainly have that right. I didn't have my demands met and yet I stayed initially for the DDs which everyone says not to do. I had to learn to accept that I might not (and ultimately didn't) have all my demands met.

Yet here we are in what seems like a solid foundation for recovery. Gemela is very careful not to place herself in any situation that might give me the slightest cause for concern. She does think about how I night feel. I cannot fault her on any part her behaviour and she works hard on intimacy. We never talk about the A but there hasn't been any need either. I cut off communication with Pool Boy's GF because each time we exchanged an email, my relationship to gemela spiraled down quickly. Fortunately I haven't heard from her in a year or so.

So very simply put, I do believe that MB can and has saved marriages. It may not be a short process. The WS does need time to flush the A from the system. The BS has a lot to deal with even after the A is dead so kill it as quickly as possible. WS may not follow the BS's guidelines but those guidelines become less important with time. Case in point is the Trueheart letter. The importance or even relevance of disclosure diminishes with time because the BS changes his/her view of what the A really was but only within the context that the BS begins to rebuild the self-esteem that was shattered post Dday. If I now look at those love notes, I want to laugh rather than cry (but I don't look). I now understand how pitiful they both were.

At the end of the day, it is more about saving yourself than saving the marriage. You cannot have the second without the first. I now see OM for what he really was and my view of WS during the A is not the same as my view of FWS today. I can respect one but not the other. One of them I want in my life but the other I don't.

One of the downsides of the 15.5 hours per week with gemela is that it has resulted in me beating her three or four times a week and she isn't taking it too well. It's not really something I mean to do but it just happens. If we spent less time together, I don't think I would beat her so much. It's just that those new golf clubs have taken about 10 strokes off my game and no matter how much she practices, I can still take her 5 to 7 strokes a side. It's gotten to the point that DD1 will soon be beating gemela but that's because DD1 refuses to give gemela strokes.

About Saudi - yes still here and the plan is to be here another 10 or 11 years. We now have long term plans and are already planning where we will be and what we will do in 11 or 12 years. Gemela has already decided where the DDs will go to boarding school in 6 to 7 years. Well okay she still hasn't chosen between Switzerland and Italy but it will be one of the two. Gemela's view of Mexico is also changing. Her sister is having to expatriate so she is progresively losing her ties there. There is even a chance that sis will move over here. Based on what is happening to the US economy, we have no desire to go there at this point. Gemela is aware enough of world events to know what a good deal we have here. She is also really enjoying life here now. Perception is a funny thing. She never wants to go back to Dubai.

Wonderful to hear from you my good friend. I was going to send you an email the other day!

You sly dog changing your name! I almost missed this.

Well I almost sent you an email too but got to thinking about the MB policy. [Just kidding.] The name thing is a result of MB not unbanning me even though I had myself banned. It's interesting to come back after a year and see all the unique situations that have emerged. Infidelity (and STDs) truly are the gifts that just keep on giving.

But there is hope.

It was nice to hear from Loneliness too.

Does anyone know whatever happened to my alter ego ToddAC? I did see he was posting for a while on that "other" web site but our proxy server has since banned that web site from view. Just as well. It wasn't a very helpful site.

Good grief. Blast from the past. I can't remember if you're speaking to me or not. Probably not.

Just a wild guess but did ToddAC get the divorce? Glad to know he survived the apartment fire.

Deleted - personal information

BTW I can tell you that after my debacle of breaking NC 2 years ago, my H and I have gone from strength to strength. We are very, very happy. MB works.

I might have to delete the stuff I've told you. TAC is a very private person and won't like having info about him spread over MB.

lol, you don't change do you?

You mean you want to delete this or something else?

lol, yes that. And now I can't delete because you've quoted it. Duh!!!

It's not so bad on here. On the "other" site he had a huge following and he wasn't up to answering everyone every time his name was mentioned.

I joined the "other" site. I made wonderful friends I have to say. I announced my departure because I'd "had" infidelity up to here and when you announce your departure there, your access is blocked but I still keep in touch with a lot of them on Facebook.

The other site is like the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer video where everyone is sitting around Christmas Eve on the Island of Misfit Toys except that, on the other site, Santa never comes.

lol, yes, no plans but they were good to me. They knew the whole story, all of it, nothing left out, but they were good to me.

Good to hear. What kind of person would criticize you for reconnecting with OM - and then not telling Rob? They should be ashamed!

Yeah - how cruel can you be. LOL.